We are 19 days into the new year. Only 19 days into this new year and already members of our police force have killed 62 people nationwide. Yes, you read that right:
Nineteen days into the new year and members of our police force have already killed 62 people.
While the antics of the current occupant of the White House have us all riveted in varying degrees of revulsion, anger, and frustration, one of the very real dangers of the media’s single-minded obsession with him and only things having to do with him is that nothing else gets covered. The deaths of 62 people in 18 days at the hands of our law-enforcement agents should be getting the breaking news treatment. Quite clearly the system is broken. Or are we content to make this our new normal?
For the third year in a row, police nationwide shot and killed nearly 1,000 people, a grim annual tally that has persisted despite widespread public scrutiny of officers' use of fatal force.
Police fatally shot 987 people last year, or two dozen more than they killed in 2016, according to an ongoing Washington Post database project that tracks the fatal shootings. Since 2015, The Post has logged the details of 2,945 shooting deaths, culled from local news coverage, public records and social-media reports.
Are we really sure that these people had to die?
Of the last ten deaths since January 1, only one — or maybe two — could reasonably pass the smell test. Let’s take a look at some of them:
Sixteen-year-oldJoseph Haynes was actually in a courtroom when he was shot in the stomach. Question is, why should a deputy be discharging his gun in a situation where no weapons are involved?
But Hayne's grandmother, Geraldine Haynes, told the newspaper that her grandson was not resisting when he was shot and questioned why the officer did not deploy a stun-gun.
She added that the attack began after a confrontation between Hayne's mother and the deputy.
Mr Ferrell confirmed on Thursday that the officer was equipped with a Taser.
Seventy-two-year-old Geraldine Townsend was killed by police after she shot two officers with a “high-powered pellet gun,” we are told.
"The replica pellet guns are just as dangerous as the real guns," said Hastings.
Officers said they went to the house in the first place to arrest Livingston for selling drugs.
His arrest affidavit said officers found a mason jar of what appears to be marijuana, surveillance cameras, and monitors, a police scanner and three pellet guns inside the home.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.72-year-old Geraldine Townsend
There are a number of questions surrounding this case. Did the race of the occupants of the house have anything to do with how they were treated? Is it illegal to own pellet guns? And a “mason jar of marijuana”? Really? That huge operation to recover a mason jar of marijuana and pellet guns? Talk about over-policing! Over-policing, lack of training with a healthy dash of disregard for human life make for a murderous brew.
One early morning, Officers found Kerry Lee Nield, 53, standing in the middle of the road with her rifle. That’s it; she was just standing there.
According to a news release, when officers arrived, they found a female with a rifle standing in the roadway. After talking for several minutes with Neild, officers fired shots at her. No officers were injured during the event.
She’s now dead because the cops only had minutes to spare.
This next case is, to say the least, confusing. A man had a gun to his (own) head, police disarmed him so that he no longer had the gun, but he managed to get in his truck and attempted to run over the cops at which point they had no option but to kill him? In any case, this unidentified man became the 57th person to die at the hands of law enforcement officers in the last 18 days.
We congratulate Sheriff Richard Jones and his men from the Butler County Police Department in Ohio for a job well done. For 30 hours the authorities waited out an armed man holding a 10-year-old hostage. Despite the kidnapper firing off 30 shots, this very professional team took cover and refused to fire a single shot. In the end, both kidnapper and hostage were taken alive.
“Something like this, we just do the best we can, take our time, and make it happen,” Jones said.
Authorities said more than 100 police and other emergency responders from other local departments participated in the standoff. Police praised apartment managers and residents for bringing them food and allowing them to use their facilities in single-digit temperatures.
Yes! This is how it should work. Always! The community and the people who swore to serve and protect them working together toward a common goal. Police exercising patience and discipline. A sophisticated police team and an engaged community showing how it should and can be done. Thank you.
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About Support the Dream Defenders
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.(Wordcloud composed of Support the Dream Defenders, Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act, Expand Medicaid, Freedom of Information Act Project, Combat Racism, Demand Equality.)
Members of the Daily Kos group Support the Dream Defenders launched four ongoing projects:
1.We came together to support the Dream Defenders in Floridaand their mission, our first project and the origin of our name. TheDream Defendersdefend the Dream of Martin Luther King Jr. by "develop[ing] the next generation of radical leaders to realize and exercise our independent collective power; building alternative systems and organizing to disrupt the structures that oppress our communities." Please donatehere.
2.OurMichael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act, crowd-sourced at Daily Kos in the fall of 2014 after the death of Michael Brown. Our bill quickly earned endorsements from the NAACP and the ACLU. The NAACP forwarded our bill to members of Congress, and we distributed it to members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other progressive members of Congress. President Obama signed into a law a small piece of our bill in December 2014. The Department of Justice included parts of our law in their reports on Ferguson, Missouri, in 2015. Our state version of the MBOPRA is currently in committee in the Kansas legislature.
3.OurFreedom of Information Act project. Nineteen Republican governors chose to kill poor people by not expanding Medicaid.Ebola has killed about 9000 people in total; Republican governors kill 23,000 people PER YEARby refusing federal support for Medicaid, a story ignored by traditional media. Our project forces those governors to out themselves, clapping them in a Catch 22. With the support of readers, we publicize our results through letters to the editor, press releases, and petitions.
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